Democratic House candidates may have received 5.4% more votes than Republican House candidates, and so on. But I am talking about actual Party ID. In 2006, the breakdown was D37, R34, and I29, and together this mix cast 5.4% more votes for Democratic House candidates than Republican House candidates. It turns out that the Independents voted for Democrats by a 57-39 margin, compared to 49-46 in 2004 -- and that's essentially why the House flipped the way it did.
Incidentally, while retrieving this information, I noticed something else that was very interesting. In 2004, the Independents favored Kerry, but only by a single point: 49-48. In 2000, they favored Dubya 47-45. In the Gallup polling for Sept. 22-28, McCain led this group by nine points. With McCain doing better with Independents than Dubya did and holding his own GOP base, Obama is going to need ridiculously high turnout with his own base (signficantly better than Kerry, who is already the second highest vote-getter in Presidential election history) in order to win the election.
But hey, all the media polls say Obama is going to win in a landslide. Past election history doesn't matter. Actual polling data doesn't matter. What matters is that the media says that Obama will win and resistance from stupid Republicans is futile. Right?
WE'RE DOOMED!!!!! Oh, the humanity! [sob]
By the way, interesting comparison on McCain's indie numbers vs. Kerry/Bush and Bush/Gore.
The Obama inevitable winner, rock star, messiah, shining light hype seems to be RAPIDLY diminishing.
Obama is quicky being overshadowed by Sarah drawing TWICE as many people as Obama to rallies. The Dems are terrfied of her. We need to make sure that as many as possible get to those rallies.
Send Sarah and Todd to WS, MN, MI and Iowa. My guess is they will sweep the Northern Midwest at bag at least 2 of those states and maybe all of them.
If Sarah keep drawing larger crowds than Obama his star will dim rapidly.
Ignore the polls folks.
As far as bashing John McCain - I have major RINO issues with him. Obama is nothing compared to McCain. When I was a little boy, John McCain sat in a Hanoi prison for 5 or 6 years for fighting in a war JFK and LBJ started. McCain fought for my freedom whether the war was right or wrong. Our boys (and girls) were treated like garbage by Libs when they came home. McCain is not perfect but he deserves our respect and we should push him, fight with him if he is wrong but always respect him.
The only thing Obama has done is damaged my IRA with his criminal cronies at Fannie & Freddie which caused this financial implosion. It was not toatally Wall Street or even close - it was really Fannie & Freddie.
Fight, work, donate and volunteer for McCain-Palin 2008.
The Rasmussen poll is based on voter turnout models. It really has less to do with party ID as much as what they project the turnout to be. Thus, since turnout for the Democrats (with Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents) was about 7% higher than turnout for Republicans (plus Republican-leaning Independents) in 2006, this is pegged as a down year for Republicans with losses in the House and Senate projected by the GOP, the large voter registration advantage Democrats have this year in most contested states, the economic downturn, etc. it seems not like a big stretch to see the Democrats get 6% more to the polls.
We may surprise everybody in that regard and bring the voters out, but the ballot initiatives that often give it that extra kick are missing this year and McCain is not the most popular Republican one can think of. I hope they are proven wrong, but I don’t agree that the number they have come up with to project turnout is completely outlandish but in fact a bit below 2006’s turnout difference numbers.
“Incidentally, while retrieving this information, I noticed something else that was very interesting. In 2004, the Independents favored Kerry, but only by a single point: 49-48. In 2000, they favored Dubya 47-45. In the Gallup polling for Sept. 22-28, McCain led this group by nine points. With McCain doing better with Independents than Dubya did and holding his own GOP base, Obama is going to need ridiculously high turnout with his own base (signficantly better than Kerry, who is already the second highest vote-getter in Presidential election history) in order to win the election.”
You also seem to be forgetting that there are now more Democrats than Republicans out there. It is fact that unfortunately the Republican brand has taken a hit and party identification has gone down as a result. I pointed these links out to you earlier, but you may have missed them:
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/773/fewer-voters-identify-as-republicans
In 5,566 interviews with registered voters conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press during the first two months of 2008, 36% identify themselves as Democrats, and just 27% as Republicans.
The share of voters who call themselves Republicans has declined by six points since 2004, and represents, on an annualized basis, the lowest percentage of self-identified Republican voters in 16 years of polling by the Center.
The Democratic Party has also built a substantial edge among independent voters. Of the 37% who claim no party identification, 15% lean Democratic, 10% lean Republican, and 12% have no leaning either way.
As of September 26 the party ID breakdown has been polled as:
Here are the current party ID splits for the most recent polls that currently show an Obama lead. (The firms provide slightly different sets of numbers, for registered and likely voters, but the broad trend is clear.)
Gallup: 36 Dem-29 Rep, 34 Ind
CBS/NYT: 39 Dem-28 Rep for all respondents, 38-30 for registered voters
Diageo/Hotline: 41 Dem-36 Rep for registered voters
IPSOS: 48 Dem-36 Rep for all respondents, 47-40 for registered voters
Rasmussen’s 6% rate is seen by many on the left as too low, which is understandable, given the findings of Gallup, Ipsos, CBS. Who knows where the real number lies, and it really does depend on turnout, first and foremost. But the apparent claims that Obama has to hit a some sort of amazing royal flush to even come close to winning this election ignores many realities as we are finding them today, not the least the massive money advantage Obama has over McCain, which has been reflected in much higher TV ad exposure for Obama while McCain has been pretty much silenced.
We can still win this thing, but it will be very hard to do so, everything has to go just right at just the right time.
Keep fighting the good fight sir.